


Safe

by soixantecroissants



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, I wrote this in class, Stream of Consciousness, missing year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-26 22:08:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16689802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soixantecroissants/pseuds/soixantecroissants
Summary: When Regina feels safe, and when she doesn't.





	Safe

**Author's Note:**

> So – disclaimer – I wrote this in the middle of class, where the prompt was: "describe a time in your character's life where they felt completely safe + what made that feeling go away. Thirty minutes; go." This is what came out. Handwritten, originally – which I never do – and then typed up as is, so forgive any nonsense.

She’d never felt particularly safe. Safe. What was that word even supposed to mean? Safe was something she’d never had the luxury of knowing. Safe was complacency, Mother would say. Safe was not trying. Safe was not reaching for more.

And oh how she’d reached. She’d reached with her hand and dug her father’s heart out. She’d reached toward other lands, other times, other memories that were never meant to be hers. She’d reached. And then she’d fallen.

Henry, probably. Henry was the closest thing she’d ever felt to being safe. But how long had that lasted, once she realized, once she knew? When you love something – when you want the world for them – when you learn what can be taken away, how can you ever feel safe again?

Now Henry was gone. He was better off now, she tried telling herself. He had a different mother who loved him, a life, a world full of ways for him to reach and find happiness himself. She had only ever stood in his way – with her magic, and her demons that would never stop chasing her. He was better off without all that.

Here in the forest, with worlds between them that no amount of magic could bring back together, she knew. He was safe, at least from her. And that would have to be enough.

She spent her days with this small consolation, drifting through every moment as though she might float away. There were holes in her now that could never be filled, an emptiness that only yawned wider and wider, until she wondered what was still keeping her here.

There was…something. Someone. He had a son, too. Another son who’d lost his mother.

She hadn’t meant to step in. But the boy was…so hard to say no to. Wide-eyed and wondering, fearless with her while everyone else failed to meet her eye. He loved story time, and make-believe, and play-pretend – didn’t matter what it was called in this realm. Little boys would always be little boys, until they weren’t so little any longer.

But now wasn’t the time to grow older, to know what loss meant. To not make the same mistake twice. To not know what love was again.

She let the boy’s father – the thief – teach her a thing or two about that. And he was a thief, truly, for who had given him the right to do this? To know her when no one else would. To see her angry – fuming – falling apart – and to simply hold her.

For a moment, he made her feel safe. But the moment she let him – the moment she loved him – she knew she had lost.


End file.
